All I want for a Corona Christmas is...

General (non-technical) Off-Topic
#1

I was reading a post here yesterday around TexturePacker, and wondered what people either USE or WANT for their Corona Christmas.

Here’s what I have & can’t live without.

Corona Xcode Editor - My Corona editor of choice

Coronium for all round excellence

Photoshop for graphics

Parallels for PC stuff

SSK2 for more all round excellence

My MBP :slight_smile:

Here’s what I’d like to get.

SpritePacker/TexturePacker - I know their good, just haven’t needed them yet.

Stock Photo Service like ShutterStock for those hard to find images I don’t want to make.

Rob Miracle and RG’s phone number - Just kidding.

Brian Burtons Corona Books - it helps to have other perspectives.

All of Scott Harrisons plugins - I have a lot of drive to fill :P.  and some most excellent plugins!

To be able to see more than the newest 12 plugins in the marketplace - Otherwise I have to go by category.

Aside from all that, I wish all you developers and engineers the very best for the holiday season, may your code be bug free and inspiration flow freely.

Graham

#2

I’d like a basic 3D engine and then I’d be happy

oh and masking images to not be such a performance hit (apparently that is coming)

oh and to be able to compile for nintendo switch!

#3

@everyone,

What does everyone else want for Christmas (obviously game dev or business related)?  What tools?   What tutorials?  What assets?

What do I want?.. Hmm…  I guess my wish list would include:

  • Corona  Wishes
    • HTML5 export support
  • Business Wishes
    • A new dev machine (not happening, but I can wish)
    • More users who are willing to pay for help.
    • An additional good client.  I’m down to two and that’s not cutting it any more.
  • Personal  Wishes - Nothing!  I’m happy and honestly don’t need any more toys or entertainment. So… health and happiness for myself, my family, and my friends.
#4

I’d like to know the “next big thing” and get in there first

#5

I only have 2 dev related wishes…

1:  That I could find it easier to understand code related stuff.   I have always found it really really difficult to learn anything by reading books/tutorials.  However, put me with a real person who can teach me and I pick stuff up really quickly as I’m able to ask questions directly.   This is why it takes me so flippin long to get anything done in Corona.

2:  A new dev machine.  My old late 2009 iMac is really showing it’s age these days and that’s even after it was modernised with a bucket load of RAM and a fast SSD.

#6

Why do you want " SpritePacker/TexturePacker  " It’s doesn’t reduce the texture memory since android 4 (if I remember well), the size of the apk isn’t reduce significantly. It’s only reduce the loading time 0.005 sec by image not load (the time to open and read a file).

Before open GL xx (I don’t remember wich one) the impact was huge, because texture memory was only on 2^number  x 2^sameNumber.

That’s mean an image of  2x257 px use a texture memory of 512x512 px 

My wish :

Corona for universal windows app:

        Corona run on their own server Desktop app converter to convert .exe to UWP. I need to admit that’s very difficult to do it by our own. Require a lot of space…

It’s a little thing but it can help a lot of developer

Voila, voila

#7

@remi it is not always about memory (anymore)… as a generalisation, a single atlas with many textures will render faster than lots of separate smaller textures.

#8

@sphere game studios, it’s very interesting what you said, during my test I haven’t try to display a lot of image from different sprite and compare with image from a same sprite. Can you give more information about it? On android how many percent of time is win?

#9

i’ve already got my wish, thanks to Vlad – fixing some of the more common crashes on android.  (the openal one i’ve been worried about for a while)  i know that bug-hunting isn’t “sexy” - as it doesn’t give your marketing department anything shiny to sell like a new feature would - but quality/stability/reliability is a big deal to some of us, and really hope a focus on ‘bullet-proof-ness’ will persist going forward.

#10

@remi when you have lots of assets in a single atlas you are using a single texture as far as Open GL is concerned. When you render an asset from that texture there is no hit for the memory look up and loading of the texture into the frame buffer as it is already there.

Open GL can draw all assets from the same atlas in the same draw call.  When you use lots of smaller images they can’t be batched and the changing of draw state does have an overhead.

Now, for a small number of assets you won’t notice any difference but when you are rendering hundreds or thousands per frame the performance difference will be noticeable.

#11

…wish list…

  1. Devote more time to Corona SDK business and game apps.  I was getting sucked into Web Apps, but I no longer have any big projects in this area.
  2. Refactor material-ui library to be even better now that I’ve learned more since the beginning.
  3. Purchase more tools and plugins from Corona marketplace.
  4. Wish every developer a productive and profitable New Year.
#12

Just two wises;

1- HTML5 export support

2- I wish a great Xmas for the Corona Team, anytime I needed help, they were there for me…

Also I wish @Sphere Game Studios  receives his wish for; 3D Basic engine

#13

Text field that supports basic HTML formatting.

#14

Some basic things:

  1. Level editor or at least an official/built-in support for an external tool.
  2. Basic text manipulation and styling - line height, line spacing, etc.
  3. UI widgets that work and feel intuitive on all supported platform, not just the two mobile OS’s.

Extras:

  1. An option to buy a permanent license (to put my own splash screen). Subscription-based payment models are doing some unpleasant things to my subconsciousness even if it’s something like $5/year and I’d do my best to drop it at the first chance I get.
  2. UWP export option.
#15

  • basic html text formatting

  • linux version of corona sdk

  • linux or windows version of corona native

#16

Keep in mind that TexturePacker will conserve space when a lot of transparency is involved. It knows how to “pack” objects tightly which will actually save disk space.

Rob

#17

@rob when we use some website as tinypng.com (that’s not the better), when there is a lot of empty space we save only a few Byte and not a few kilo Byte as far as I know compare to texture packer who pack a lot of images

A link to two compress folder, with and without texture packer, think to uncompress folder to compare size.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UyhjFioueErorO5PgvBHQNXP6uGU9riX?usp=sharing

#18

The texturepacker.zip file downloads as zero bytes and google drive can’t preview it.

Rob

#19

@Rob Sorry for the problem, I have upload it again. I have verified if now it’s open correctly.

#20

What packing method are you using? It looks like you’re using “basic” and not “MaxRect”. If you use “MaxRect” it trims most of the transparency out and makes much more packed files. Look at this example:

Your images are all on a grid so each frame’s transparency is being retained. In that case, it won’t save you any space. But if you see how tight TexturePacket can pack individual images, it will save disk space as well.

Rob